The Ruby in the Smoke

by Philip Pullman

  Van Eeden leant forward and caressed her hand briefly. She drew it away, but he was swifter: one hand flew to her mouth, the other held the knife to her breast. The hand over her mouth was sweetly scented; she felt sick, and pushed the bag up between them, an inch from his chest. She heard his breathing. She was dizzy with fear.

  "Well?" he said softly.

  And then she squeezed the trigger.

  The explosion seemed to rock the cab. The impact flung van Eeden away from her and back against the seat; the knife dropped from his hand, and he clutched at his chest and opened his mouth once or twice, trying to say something - and then he slipped to the floor and fell still.

  She opened the door and ran. She threw herself forward away from what she had done; she was crying, she was shaking, she was wild with fear...

  She couldn't see where she was going. There were footsteps coming after her, running, pursuing.

  Someone was calling her name. She cried, "No! No!" and ran on. She found she was clutching the gun, and flung it from her with loathing; it skittered over the wet cobbles and then disappeared into the gutter.

  A hand caught her arm.

  "Sally! Stop! Sally, don't! Listen! Look - it's me -"

  She fell and all the breath was knocked out of her. She twisted to look up, and saw Rosa.

  "Rosa - oh, Rosa, what have I done -"

  She clung to her and sobbed, and Rosa held her tightly and rocked her like a child, kneeling heedlessly in the filthy gutter.

  "Sally, Sally-- I heard a shot and - are you hurt? What has he done?"

  "I k-k-killed him - I killed him - it was m-me -"

  And then came a fresh burst of sobbing. Rosa held her more tightly, and stroked her hair.

  "Are you - did you - are you sure?" she said, looking over Sally's shoulder.

  "I shot him, Rosa," said Sally, her face in Rosa's neck. "Because he was going to - going to kill me, and... He had a knife. He killed so many people. He killed my - oh, Rosa, I can't call him Captain Lockhart! I loved him - he was my father, in spite of - my Daddy..."

  Such floods of grief shook her now that Rosa felt herself weeping too. She could not speak.

  But eventually the older girl pulled her gently upright.

  "Listen, Sally," she said, "we must find a policeman. We've got to - don't shake your head - we absolutely must. It's gone too far now. And with Mrs Holland and everything... You mustn't worry. It's all finished. But now it's over, we must go to the police. I know what happened... I can testify to it. You won't get into trouble."

  "I didn't know you were there," said Sally weakly, standing up and looking down at the mud on her cloak and skirt.

  "How could I let you just go off like that? I got into another cab and followed. Thank Heaven there was one there. And when I heard the shot -"

  She shook her head; and then they heard the sound of a police whistle.

  Sally looked at her.

  "That's from the cab," she said. "They must have found him. Come on..."

  Chapter Twenty

  THE CLOCK-TOWER

  Strange Events at East India Docks.

  MYSTERY OF EMPTY CAB

  A SHOT IN THE NIGHT

  An unexplained and mysterious disturbance took place near the East India Docks during the early hours of the morning of Tuesday last.

  Police Constable Jonas Torrance, an experienced and reliable officer, was patrolling his beat in the area of the Docks when, at approximately twenty minutes past two, he heard the sound of a shot.

  He hastened to make a search of the area, and within five minutes had found a four-wheeler cab apparently abandoned in East India Dock Wall Road. There was no sign of horse or driver, but when the constable looked inside the cab, he found evidence of a desperate struggle.

  On the floor and seat was a substantial quantity of blood. P.C. Torrance estimated it to be not less than three pints and possibly a great deal more. It is clear that no one could lose this amount of blood in so short a time and live; and yet nowhere could be found the victim of this brutal attack.

  A closer examination of the cab revealed a knife, of the sort used by seamen, under one of the seats. The blade was prodigiously sharp, but it was clean and free of blood.

  The constable summoned aid, and a search was made of the neighbouring streets, but nothing further was discovered. At present the case remains a mystery.

  "We tried to tell him," said Sally. "Didn't we, Rosa?"

  "We told him four times, and he wouldn't listen. Not a word would penetrate his skull. He ordered us away in the end, and said that we were hindering him in the performance of his duty."

  "He just refused to believe it."

  "He's an experienced and reliable officer," said Frederick. "It says so here. I think he had every right to send you about your business, and I don't know what you're complaining of. Do you, Bedwell?"

  They were sitting around the table in Burton Street. It was three days later; the Reverend Bedwell had come down from Oxford to learn what had happened, and had accepted their invitation to dinner. Rosa was there because the play she was in had been taken off: the backer had lost his nerve before he had recovered his money, and Rosa was out of a job as a consequence. Sally knew that the Burton Street economy would suffer badly, but said nothing.

  Mr Bedwell thought before answering Frederick's question.

  "It seems to me you did the right thing in going to him," he said. "That was entirely good and proper. And you tried to tell him - what, four times?"

  Rosa nodded. "He thought we were just being foolish and wasting his time."

  "Then I think you've done all that you need to, and his reply is no more than the blindness of justice. The outcome is just; he was shot in self-defence, after all, which is a right we all have. And there's no trace of the man now?"

  "Not a sign," said Frederick. "He probably found his way back to his ship. He's either dead or on his way to the East by now."

  Mr Bedwell nodded. "Well, Miss Lockhart, I think you've done everything you should, and your conscience should be perfectly clear."

  Frederick said quietly, "What about me? I intended to kill that ruffian of Mrs Holland's. In fact I told him I would. Was that murder?"

  "In defence of another, your actions were justified. As for your intentions - of that, I can't judge. You may have to live with the knowledge that you set out to kill a man. But I've exchanged blows with the fellow myself, and I wouldn't judge you too harshly."

  Frederick's face was badly bruised. His nose had been broken, and he had lost three teeth; and his hands were so painful that he still had great difficulty in holding anything. Sally, when she saw him, had cried. She cried very easily now.

  "How's the young fellow?" Mr Bedwell went on.

  "Jim? A broken arm and a fine collection of black eyes and assorted bruises. But you'd have to attack him with a regiment of cavalry and a howitzer or two to do any serious damage. What I'm more concerned about is the fact that he's lost his job."

  "The firm's closed down," said Sally. "It's in utter confusion. There's a report about it on another page of today's paper."

  "And the little girl?"

  "Nothing," said Rosa. "Not a word. Not a sign. We've looked everywhere - we've been to all the orphanages - but she's vanished."

  She did not voice what they all feared.

  "My poor brother was very fond of her," said the clergyman. "She kept him alive in that horrible place... Well, well; we must hope. But as for you, Miss Lockhart - well, should I call you Miss Lockhart? Or Miss Marchbanks?"

  "I've been Lockhart for sixteen years. And when I hear the word father, I think of Mr Lockhart. I don't know what legal status I have, or what rubies count for in courts of law... I'm Sally Lockhart. I work for a photographer. That's all that matters now."

  But it wasn't. A week went by, and still Adelaide did not appear, in spite of Trembler's endless tramping the streets and inquiring at the schools and workhouses. And still Rosa did not find another j
ob, and worse: the play she had been rehearsing for folded too. Now there was nothing coming in at all except for what they could sell in the shop, and that situation was almost the worst of all - for having begun to establish themselves and sell the pictures, they needed desperately to build on this first foundation before the public lost interest; and they had no money to pay for the new pictures they would have to produce.

  Sally tried one supplier after another, but no one would let them have paper or chemicals on credit. She argued, she pleaded, she put the case as forcibly as she could, and got next to nothing. One firm let them have some printing paper, but not enough; that was the only success they had. As for the printing firm who were going to produce the stereographs, they had refused to pay any money in advance, and any royalties they could look forward to were too far ahead in the future to be of any use now. At one point Sally had to stop Frederick selling the studio camera. "Don't sell the equipment," she told him; "never do that. How on earth would we get it back? What are we going to do when we expand, if we have to spend the first money we get on buying back equipment we should never have let go in the first place?" He saw the sense of it, and the camera stayed in the studio. Occasionally he took a portrait or two; but the business they all cherished was dying.

  And Sally knew that she had the money to save it. And she knew that if she tried to use it, Mr Temple would find her and stop her, and she would lose everything.

  Finally, one cold still morning at the end of November, a letter arrived from Oxford.

  Dear Miss Lockhart,

  I must ask you to forgive my lapse of memory. I can only put it down to the shock of my poor brother's death, and the tragic events we have all lived through. I know that I intended to mention it to you when we met the other day, but it slipped my mind, and I had returned to Oxford before I remembered it.

  You will recall that my brother was given a message by your father - by Captain Lockhart, that is to say - to bring to you. On the day of his death, my brother wrote something down on a piece of paper, intending to send it to you; it was the final part of the message, which he had omitted before in his confusion. It was very short - no more than the words "Tell her to look under the clock."

  There was no explanation, but he assured me that you would know which clock was meant. That was all Matthew remembered, but he insisted I write it down and tell you. I did the first, but forgot the second until now.

  I hope it has some meaning for you. Once again, I must apologize for not remembering it sooner.

  With my kindest regards,

  Yours very truly,

  Nicholas Bedwell

  Sally felt her heart beating fast. She knew which clock he meant. Their house in Norwood had, over the stable, a wooden clock-tower - a tiny little folly cheerfully carved and painted, with a clock that struck the quarters and needed winding once a week. It was a preposterous thing to have in a suburban villa, but Sally had loved to clamber about the loft above the stable and watch the mechanism beating slowly. And underneath the clock there was a loose plank in the wooden wall of the loft, which Sally had prised off one day to find a perfect hiding-place for treasures.

  Look under the clock...

  Well, it might be nothing, but it was all she had left. Without saying anything to the others, she bought a train ticket, and set off for Norwood.

  The house had changed in the four months since she had last seen it. The windows and the door had been painted, there was a new iron gate, and the rose bed in the centre of the circular drive had been dug up and replaced with what looked as if it was going to be a fountain. It was not her home any more, and she was glad of that; the past was over and finished.

  The tenants were a Mr and Mrs Green and their large family. Mr Green was at work when Sally arrived somewhere in the city - and Mrs Green was paying a call on a neighbour, but a friendly, harassed governess saw Sally at once, and raised no objections to her looking in the stables.

  "Of course they wouldn't mind," she said. "They're very kind - Charles! Stop that at once!" (to a small child who was demolishing the umbrella stand). "Please go ahead, Miss Lockhart - do excuse me, but I must - oh, Charles, really! You can find your own way? Of course you can."

  The stables had not changed, and the familiar smell and the sound of the clock gave her a brief pang, but she hadn't come for that. It took only a minute to find the box in the hiding-place - a little rosewood chest, bound with brass, which had stood on her father's desk for years. She recognized it at once and drew it out.

  She sat on the dusty floor to open it. There was no key - just a simple catch.

  The box was full of banknotes.

  It took her several moments to realize what she had in her hands. She touched them wonderingly; she couldn't even guess how much there was. And then she saw a letter.

  22nd June, 1872

  My dearest Sally,

  If you are reading this, the worst has happened, and I am dead. My poor girl, you'll have much to bear - but you've got the strength to do it and not give in.

  This money, darling, is for you. It is exactly to the penny the sum I put into Lockhart and Selby years ago, when Selby was a good man. The firm will crash soon. I have made sure of that. But I have recovered this, and it is yours.

  I would not feel justified in taking more. I am entitled to in law - and, to be sure, a large part of the firm's business has always been strictly and honourably above suspicion - but its affairs have been so inextricably tangled with evil for so long now that I do not wish to.

  It's my fault that it was not spotted sooner. But Selby dealt with the Eastern side of the business, and, like a fool, I trusted him. It's up to me to set it right. Fortunately we have a good agent in Singapore. I shall see him, and together we shall deal with the evil which has wound itself around our business.

  And that evil, Sally, is opium. It's a strange scruple for one who trades in the East, to be sure - all the China trade we now have was founded on opium. But I abominate it.

  I do so because I saw what it did to George Marchbanks, once my closest friend. And if you are reading this, my dear one, you will know who he was, and what bargain we made. Even the Ruby itself is tainted; for the wealth that paid for it came from the poppyfields of Agrapur. Those fields are today more prosperous than ever; the evil remains. As for Marchbanks, I have not seen him from that day to this, but I know he is still alive, and I know he will tell you the truth if I send you to him. And I shall only do so if there is no hope for me.

  Take the money, my Sally, and forgive me. Forgive me for not telling you to your face; and forgive me for inventing your mother. There was a girl like that, and I loved her, but she married another; and she is long dead.

  I give you the money in cash, because I know that you would never extract it from the grasp of a lawyer. Temple is a good man, and will look after the rest of your money faithfully and well, but he will consider you incapable of doing so yourself, and will use every method the laws of England allow him to keep control of it from you - for the best of motives. But with cash, you have the freedom to use it as you think fit. Look for a small business, one which needs capital to expand. You will do it. You will choose well. I have chosen less happily; my friends, my partner, all have disappointed me.

  But once in my life I chose very well. It was when I chose you, my dear one, in preference to a fortune. That choice has been my greatest pride and my greatest joy. Goodbye, my Sally. You will understand what it means when I sign myself with the deepest love,

  Your father,

  Matthew Lockhart.

  She let the paper fall and bowed her head. Everything had come to this, now: to a box full of money, and a letter. She was crying. She had loved him very much. And he had made everything safe; there would be a future, and a job for Jim... They could employ a detective to look for Adelaide. They could...

  "Daddy," she whispered.

  Oh, there would be difficulties, hundreds of them. But she would cope. Garland and Lockhart!r />
  She gathered up letter and box, and left for the train.

  Now read the first chapter of the next thrilling Sally Lockhart mystery...

  THE SHADOW IN THE NORTH

  One sunny morning in the spring of 1878, the steamship Ingrid Linde, the pride of the Anglo-Baltic shipping line, vanished in the Baltic Sea.

  She had been carrying a cargo of machine parts, and a passenger or two, from Hamburg to Riga. The voyage had been uneventful; the ship was only two years old, well found and seaworthy, and the weather was gentle.

  A day out from Hamburg, she was sighted by a schooner plying in the opposite direction. They exchanged signals. A barque, in the same part of the sea, would have seen her two hours later if the Ingrid Linde had kept to her course. But the barque saw nothing.

  She vanished so swiftly and so completely that journalists of the time scented something as delicious as the lost continent of Atlantis, or the Mary Celeste, or the Flying Dutchman. They got hold of the fact that the Chairman of the Anglo-Baltic line and his wife and daughter were on board, and filled the papers with accounts of how it was the little girl's first voyage; that on the contrary, she wasn't a little girl, but a young lady of eighteen, with a mysterious disease; that there was a curse on the ship, laid by a former sailor; that the cargo consisted of a deadly mixture of explosives and alcohol; that in the Captain's cabin there was a fetish idol from the Congo, which he had stolen from an African tribe; that in that part of the sea there was a gigantic and unpredictable whirlpool which appeared without warning and sucked ships down into a monstrous cavern at the centre of the earth - and so on, and so on.

  The story became quite famous. It was resurrected occasionally by writers who specialized in books with titles like Strange Horrors of the Deep.

  But without facts, even the most inventive journalism peters out in the end, and there were no facts at all in this case - just a ship which had been there one minute and vanished the next, and the sunshine, and the empty sea.

  One cold morning a few months afterwards, an old lady knocked on the door of an office in the financial heart of London. Painted on the door were the words S. Lockhart, Financial Consultant. After a moment, a voice - a female voice - called out, "Come in," and the old lady entered the room.